Oporto, Portugal

2 weekends ago (Sept 26-28) I went to Oporto, Portugal with 5 friends from my KU study abroad group. We left Friday morning by bus and got to Oporto in the afternoon. When we got off the bus, our first order of business was to eat, we were starving! We walked for what seemed like forever until we found a restaurant that looked good…we were SO right. It was delicious. Although it is quite possible that anything would have been delicious at this point because we hadn’t had a single bite of anything all day! After we ate we spent about an hour and a half looking for our hostel! It was so frustrating because although we had a map, we were incapable of finding this place. The map of Oporto was obviously in Portuguese and so difficult to understand because it doesn’t list all the street names, only the bigger ones…thus making it difficult to find your way around. The upside to it taking us forever to find our hostel was that it allowed us to walk around the city. Although I had my eye out for our hostel, I was also observing my surroundings in general. I liked what I saw. The city was vibrant and the people seemed energetic and fun. Unlike some of the cities in Spain I have been to, people were walking through the streets with a smile on their face. Because school just started (In most of Europe, school starts in October), there were lots of young people. We even saw what we figured to be sorority/fraternity hazing…groups of people walking down the street with matching shirts, singing, dancing, and following the commands of their “leader”. Eventually, we found our hostel, got all checked in and decided to take a little siesta before getting ready to go out and do some more exploring. When we all got up and got ready, we headed down to the port…It was awesome. The pics I have don’t do it justice, especially because they are night shots. (Check out my Shutterfly page: http://mexigurl14.shutterfly.com/) I would have taken more pics of the port the following day, but my camera broke on Saturday morning. (No worries, my fabulous family bought me a new one and sent it to me…Merry Christmas to me!!) We asked a local for suggestions on restaurants and he pointed us in the right direction. The place we ate dinner was near the port and happened to be the best food I’ve had thus far! I took some pics so you all could take a peek at my delicious Portuguese meal! Dinner was fabulous because of the food, the atmosphere, and the waiter…An older man who spoke a little bit of Span/Port/Eng/Chinese and was so enthusiastic and fun. He played the piano and sang for us all while being an attentive and good server. Needless to say, he got a fabulous tip! :) After dinner we went port wine tasting....yes, I said port wine tasting…how lucky am I! The place we went to was a port wine school/bar/shop. The 6 of us sat down and had a nice man (who spoke English, thank god) explain everything you would ever need to know about port wine. We then got 6 different types of port wine and were told the order to drink them in and what to eat with each of them, which consisted of apricots, prunes, and chocolate. There were 2 wines that were VERY strong and bitter for my liking, but overall they were delicious. It was a great wine tasting experience. I thought about buying a bottle of port to bring home, until I realized how expensive they were…sorry family, you’ll have to do without port wine this Christmas! After the wine tasting my friends and I went to an Irish Pub for a while then headed back to our hostel. The next day the girls took a trip to the Contemporary Art Museum while the boys walked across “the bridge”. I won’t say the art museum was bad, because I have an appreciation for art, so I’ll use the word interesting to describe it. The neat part about it was the landscape outside of it. As you can see in the pics, it was beautiful! This is the point where my camera broke so you won’t see any more pics of Oporto after the museum. We met up with the boys in the evening and took a boat out onto the river…it was breathtaking. The boat ride lasted about an hour and it took us down the river to where it opened up into the ocean…I wish I would have had my camera because there aren’t a whole lot of words to describe! Seeing the city from the water was neat, a different perspective that I thoroughly enjoyed. Saturday night we ate at a really nice pizza joint. We ate pizza and pasta and let me tell you…YUMMY! After this meal I decided that I loved Portugal, lol! After dinner we had an interesting encounter. We met 3 German students traveling around Oporto for the weekend. Come to find out, they are study abroad students going to the University of Santiago…some school as us! What a small world huh? We meet Germans in Portugal who go to the same school in Spain as we do…too funny! They ended up telling us about a nightclub we had to go to, so our Saturday night/early Sunday morning ended with drinks, music, and dancing at a fun night club just minutes from our hostel! Sunday afternoon came too soon and it was time to catch our bus home…yes, I officially declare Santiago home. You wouldn’t image how much I miss my own bed (here in Spain) when I’m away on weekend vacations staying in hostels. Some general observations of Oporto – One of the not so good observations I made was the lack of dental hygiene these people had. I have never seen so many people with awful looking teeth. Mom, considering you work in a dental lab and notice people’s teeth all the time; you would be in complete disgust! It made me rethink my career goals, instead of majoring in Journalism; I should go to dental school and move to Portugal…these people need a tooth savior! I bet I could make a lot of money by doing this, then again…it might be a tad far fetched considering the only word I picked up while in Portugal was “Obrigada” aka “Thank you”. Portuguese is very difficult to understand, I think I’ll stick to learning Spanish! Overall, I loved Oporto. Not only is it a beautiful city, the people are great…nice and lively! The architecture of the main bridge over the river is amazing. I can’t imagine living there and seeing this every day. The temperature there was great and being so close to the water, there was always a nice little breeze. I am excited to return to Portugal soon, only this time a new city…Lisbon. When Kim and Michael come to visit (just 12 more days…so exciting), we are spending 3 days in Lisbon, which is said to be the most beautiful city in Portugal…I can’t wait!